Monthly Archives: June 2009

Opera unite!

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di090616

This description (from the anime Hatsukoi Limited, btw) probably describes the average user of this new piece of free software. Ironically, it is called “Opera unite”.

On February 16, 2001, I wrote an essay about PC-to-PC networking and the future of the Internet. And then I did not upload it, because I decided to write about an anime instead and how it reflected my own life. So there is no way for me to actually document my prediction of the present event.

On February 10, 2003, I once again took a drive-by stab at the topic, mentioning that I would have liked to host the Chaos Node directly from my local harddisk, if standardized technology existed. It didn’t, so I didn’t. I still don’t, but the possibility suddenly jumped miles closer. Thanks to Opera, the Norwegian web browser which tends to come up with the good ideas first, then have them copied by IE and lately Firefox. This one is highly unlikely to be copied by Microsoft, however.

Opera just built a server into the browser. It is not quite grandmother-friendly yet, as there come up some lines that look like Javascript code when you set it up. But it is still astonishingly simple, and should only take a few minutes to get running for the parent generation. From then on, changing the setup can be done in seconds.

There is already built-in code for letting other people play your MP3 files, if you so decide. Or look at your pictures, but only those pictures you want to share. You can even share entire folders to the point where people can download anything they want from them. Obviously this should not be of a too private nature. Well, unless it is password protected. Any of this can be password protected, although each application can only have one password. (So you can not share your baby pictures with grandma and your porn work related documents with someone from work at the same time. You would have to run multiple instances of the same program, and I don’t see that supported.)

The big deal however is that programmers can add their own small programs. If I don’t like that the music players only handles MP3 files, I may make my own that plays AAC, the format used by iTunes. Of course, that requires me to actually program, which I stopped doing years ago. Whatever I think of, someone else is bound to do it, and thanks to Google I should be able to find them when they do so.

The folks at Opera Software are very excited about the new invention. They feel they have finally fulfilled the promise of the Internet. I agree. But I don’t think it will spread enough to really change the world as long as only Opera supports it. (You don’t need Opera to view such a site, only to make it available. So I can share my MP3 files via Opera, and you can play them in Firefox or Internet Exploder.)

The real revolution, I think, will be for illegal file sharing. The “sites” created this way are temporary, ephemeral , transient and don’t last long. There is no backup of them on any corporate server which can be subpoenaed by the Rabid Illiterate American Association or likeminded people. Operaunite.com only connects the giver and the taker, they don’t host the files. Your local harddisk hosts the files. And unlike a torrent tracker, Operaunite.com does not give any hint as to what is stored, or has been stored in the past.

The downside of this is that you can’t find these places on Google or The Pirate Bay or any of the other public resources. You get to know of them by e-mail, IM, certain chat rooms, friends-locked blog entries, someone else’s Opera Unite page, or other underground channels.

If the content is harmless and can stand the light of day, however, there is no reason why you can’t spread it more widely. But even then, you may not want to. Because most likely there will only be a few people in the world interested in your baby pictures and Abba collection, and you may just as well tell them directly.

If this really had come in 2003, there would have been a big unmet demand. But by now we have cloud computing. Pictures can be shared for free on Flickr and Photobucket. Music can be shared for free on Imeem and probably some other sites. Sendfile lets you send any large file privately, such as for instance a movie. There really is no reason to have your computer serving files directly unless you are a fanatic individualist (this program is made in Norway, remember, the only country where the distance between neighbors is measured in stone throws) or really, really don’t want anyone spying on what you’re doing.

Or, of course, you could be like me and do it simply because you can.  Join the revolution!

Sims 3: Paintings and novels

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Tools of the trade(s).

If you don’t want to run on the career treadmill, or if your life goal is to be an illustrious author, you would love to live in the world of Sims 3. In this near future scenario, the demand for handmade paintings and novels is insatiable. I have of course come up with a rational explanation for this. Obsessed, me? Nah, just your ordinary genius. Here we go:

If you look at the workplaces in Sims 3, you will notice that nobody works at a factory or warehouse or drives a truck. These things either don’t exist or nobody cares enough to place them on the map. Even the fast-food outlet is not hiring. The jobs either require a human touch or a bit of genius: Medicine, science, law enforcement, music etc. (And, strangely enough, the military; I suppose some people still believe in military intelligence…)

So my theory is that in the timeline of Sims 3, manufacture has been entirely automated and is now in the claws of industrial robots, with minimal if any human supervision. There is an unlimited variety of mass produced goods – you can for instance get your clothes and sofa in matching polka dots if you so desire – but there are still things the machines can’t do.

With the market for machine-made stuff saturated, people value things that are actually handmade, such as firsthand paintings and new novels. Actually this is a trend already in motion, and one that has been predicted to explode once nanomachines make it as easy to copy hardware as it now is to copy software. (I don’t believe that will happen, by the way. But robotic manufacture? It could well happen in our world too. We’ve been on that path for a long time.)

Anyway, that’s the conjecture. The “fact” of the game world is that paintings and novels are paid fairly well. The last couple days I’ve been playing a guy who wanted to become an illustrious author, that is to say someone who has realized his full potential in both illustration (painting) and writing. I’ll share my mistakes for the benefit of those who will follow after me.

My first mistake was to take a job, and keep it for too long. The guy wanted to get a job in medicine, something that does not at all relate to his lifetime goal. I let him get such a job, and he wasted years emptying bedpans at a lousy pay, just like in the real world. Also like in the real world, as soon as he started to get a livable wage, he was put on call. He would come home stressed and dirty and tired, take a shower and sit down with the chess board to have some fun while improving his logic skill. (Logic skill is used in the medicine career in Sims 3; your opinion may vary on whether this also is like the real world.) This guy was even a genius, meaning he took easily to logic. But by the time he was in a reasonably good mood, it was time to go to bed. And then the phone would ring, and he would have to hurry to the hospital and work until he was on the verge of collapse. He barely made it back to the bed without fainting, and then three hours later it was time to get up and go to work again. It is entirely too realistic. So he finally quit. I should have done that long before.

My next mistake was to start with the writing instead of painting. I guess my personal bias blinded me. And in all fairness, I believe writing pays more. However, there are still at least three good reasons to choose painting first:
1) Painting is fun. Not as fun as computer games, but your Sim will grow steadily more smiley as he keeps working. This is not true for writing (and most other things that earn money). With writing, you have to take breaks and do something fun or you will get depressed, or at the very least lose out on those lifetime happiness points. Remember, if your Sim is happy, those points trickle in and lets you purchase various upgrades to body and soul eventually.
2) Painting pays off as soon as you are finished. With books, you get only small advances while you write, and most of the money comes over the next six weeks, and only once a week, on Sunday. That is fine when you are financially secure, but it sucks if you have to sell your dining table to pay your bills.
3) At a high skill level, a couple paintings in each room will greatly raise the room score, and your Sim will get a bonus to happiness for as long as he stays in the room. My artistic Sim now has them even in the bathroom. As long as he is at home, the happiness points keep rolling in, even in his sleep. Novels have no such effect, as far as I know.  (Then again he keeps them in his inventory.)

A related mistake was trying to keep friends. There is a reason why writers are regarded as reclusive, and I may have been wrong in assuming that they were simply that way before they started writing. (It is hard for me to say, since I have been writing since before I started  grade school.) Between gardening, writing, and replenishing his fun, there was time for little more than eating, peeing and sleeping. Writing really is a full-time job, at least until you become famous. Since he was a friendly, charismatic person (I gave him those traits because I wanted to learn to know the inhabitants of Sunset Valley), he constantly wanted to be friends with people, or meet someone new, or just chat. And I let him. But of course the friendships unraveled quickly when he tried to actually get some writing done.

I don’t really count the gardening as a mistake, although it takes its time. The thing about gardening is that eventually you will be able to grow life fruit. Sirius Sim was lucky and found a life fruit seed fairly early, and a money tree seed as well. (I dislike the money tree, too jarring break with realism, but the seeds are not labeled when you pick them. You can see how common or uncommon they are, but not what species.) Life fruit and money tree are both “special” seeds that you can find near the graveyard or research center, and the sooner in your life you find a life fruit seed, the better your chance of becoming immortal or something close to it. You need a gardening skill of 7 to plant special seeds though, and he did not have that when he found them. So gardening was in order. Of course, you may want to become immortal through your works of art. Me, my Sim and Woody Allen all prefer to become immortal through not dying, although only my Sim has a reasonable shot at it.

Once I shifted my focus to painting, things soon started to improve. The first paintings are not enough to pay the bills, but it does not take long before money worries start to fade. Well, unless you have the “snob” trait, in which case you probably have to buy lots of expensive stuff. But who in their right mind would choose to be a snob? By the time he had fully mastered the skill of painting, the house was moderately larger and he had enough cash to do nothing for a generation or two if he so desired.

I’ll still maximize his writing skill, since it is his lifetime want, but after that I intend to let him make more friends and perhaps, one day, find love. I mean, this is not my self-Sim by any stretch of the imagination. He already met a super cute woman who was a nice bookworm like himself and they became best friends in the course of one evening. But of course she was already married. That’s the kind of blows faith strikes in Sims 3. In Sims 2, all the townies were single. Oh well. Let us hope she has daughters as cute as herself. Sirius is planning to stick around for a few generations, after all…

Sims 3: Life and death

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Sims 3 is not a matter of life or death, except for the Sims.  Here is the pink cowboy ghost Gaylord, in animated conversation with a random passerby at the graveyard.

You may say that the original Sims game was personal, Sims 2 was generational, and Sims 3 is communal. Focus is now on the community. As such, life goes on even if your Sim passes on. Except the Sims don’t exactly pass on, they just die. And then hang around as ghosts.

Starting with Sims 2, the small characters aged through a number of life phases and eventually died. After this they would return as ghosts, scaring the living, often to death. Apart from that they mostly just moped around. I always found it more convenient to get their gravestones to a cemetery the sooner the better and never go there at night.

In The Sims 3, the ghosts have a lot more personality. Actually, they retain their original personalities. So when your loving, caring grandmother dies, she won’t return to scare the grandchildren to death. Instead, she will look after the toddler. Well, actually it is somewhat limited what ghosts can do, but they do provide company. Actually, in extreme cases of company, male ghosts can beget babies, who stand a chance of being born as ghosts and grow up that way. I am not sure if female ghosts can get pregnant, they would have to die in their fertile age for that to happen, not of old age. Anyway, the ghost babies are affectionately known in the player community as “glow worms”. They grow up to ghost children. Children can now also die (in fires and such) but those ghost children are not controllable.

The science lab is constantly looking for a way to bring back the dead, but usually the outcome is a playable ghost instead. A better alternative is to not die in the first place, something most of us will probably agree with instinctively. There are ways to achieve this. There is actually even a way to resurrect the dead, but it requires skill and an elaborate procedure. It may also not be possible in Riverview, the second town, as it does not have a graveyard pond. More about this soon.

In Sims 2, you could reverse aging with Elixir of Life, an aspiration reward that you could buy for aspiration points, which you got from fulfilling wants while avoiding fears. Aspiration points still exist, although they are now lifetime happiness points and you can get them from a couple other sources as well, such as living in beautiful surroundings and listening to music. The fastest way is still to fulfill wants, and not least the big lifetime want. Unfortunately, this has very little influence on your lifespan anymore, although you can have a better life while it lasts.

Instead you now have Life Fruit, which must be grown like any other plant. It requires some gardening skill. You can get it from working in the science career, or from picking up seeds. In the latter case, just pick up and plant all “special” seeds you find (requires level 7 gardening skill) and eventually one of them will be a life plant. Special seeds are usually found either near the science building or in the town cemetery. When mature, the plant gives two life fruits every other day. Each fruit makes you one day younger, so this is a stopgap measure at best. Fortunately you can plant the fruits, and they will grow into new life plants. Once you have a small garden patch for each family member you want to keep young, it just becomes part of the daily routine. Unless some other calamity strikes.

Sims with the highest cooking skill can however do something more with life fruit. They can combine it with death fish to create ambrosia. This is powerful stuff. It can rejuvenate a Sim to the beginning of their current age, it gives days of very high happiness, and it is said to give ghosts their bodies back. I have not tried this myself. From what I have read, you need to first fish a catfish, then use it as bait to catch an angelfish, then use this as bait in the cemetery pond after midnight to catch a death fish. Perhaps I’ll try it some day.

But in any case, as I said, the game is really as much about a community as it is about a family or any one particular character. So even if your Sim lives on a diet of life fruit, or even has a garden full to sustain a family, friends and neighbors will still pass on. Your boss will retire, and one day you meet his ghost while out jogging. Grandchildren grow up and find love, or perhaps become insane kleptomaniacs, and move out. Eventually they too grow old. Being an immortal in a world of mortals is, as literature teaches us, a bittersweet experience at best, an ongoing soft tragedy. That said, I would be willing to try. And so will my favorite Sims.

Pulse vs pain

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My pulse is telling me that I am in amazing health, and should probably go train for a marathon or something.  The pain in my upper jaw is telling me that I’ve got some kind of infection again (you will remember that I wrote about these 10 years ago too on a regular basis. I still don’t know what it is.)

It is Saturday again, so I stayed up an hour longer and overslept by two hours. The sun was back after a mostly gray week with scattered showers.  Before it could get too hot, I decided to mow the lawn in the early afternoon.  I put on my pulse watch, as I do for such occasions.  To me, mowing the lawn is exercise.  That said, I think I need a new lawnmower. I have failed to sharpen the blades on this one; I am just not a do-it-yourself type I guess.  As it is now, it flattens far more grass than it cuts, so I have to go over the same stretch repeatedly to actually get it cut.  Even then some straws will rise again when I have left.

Anyway, I put on the pulse watch. It showed 65 beats per minute when I was just standing there.  That may not sound strange, but it is.  I have a resting pulse of 55 when I don’t have any infections and haven’t exercised the last day or two.  (Either one of these will evidently set off some internal work in the body that requires extra energy, presumably millions of tiny nanomachines repairing and restocking the broken or depleted parts.) That’s a pretty comfortable number, 55.  There is a good chance that most health personnel will have a noticeably higher pulse than that.  For the most part, only athletes and the occasional mutant will have much lower.  But that’s while lying flat on my back and thinking of silence.

Getting up requires a lot more work for the heart since suddenly the blood has to fight against gravity, almost 190 centimeters of uphill from ground level.  Also, you don’t notice but some pretty big muscles are hard at work keeping you upright and in balance.  So my standing pulse is normally more like 80.  I honestly have no idea why it was so low today, especially since I clearly have an infection in my face.  Infections should normally get the immune system to roll out, requiring more energy and therefore more oxygen.  But evidently my immune system is a lot less worried than I am about this inflammation. Whether this is a good or a bad thing, time will show.

The slow pulse does not seem to be brachycardia/ bradycardia,  since it rises in response to exercise. After a few minutes of mowing, my pulse was within the usual training range, and stayed there.  A doctor will normally not diagnose bradycardia unless there is fatigue, dizziness, fainting or heart conditions apart from the slow beat.  I have such symptoms very rarely, about once a year, and not the same symptom every year either.  So despite having been hospitalized twice with heart monitor after fainting for no good reason (some years ago), nobody has ever hinted that I needed any kind of treatment.  I guess being symptom-free 364 days a year is pretty good for a human.

Now if I could do that well against the perennial infections of my jaws, it would be right peachy.

Brainwave entrainment update

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You probably wonder if I have forgotten all about the brainwave entrainment projects I wrote about this spring? After all, I am a self-confessed fadboy, only my fads are out of sync with the rest of society, as am I generally. Or perhaps YOU have forgotten about them, although Holosync in particular has shot past anime in my site’s referrals. Anyway, no, I have not forgotten.

I still use the Holosync Dive track pretty much every workday morning, although I have skipped it a few times. It is a nice enough way to wake up – not beautiful, but a reasonable compromise between sleep and wakefulness. Holosync does not require actual meditation, and frankly I don’t find it conductive to traditional meditation either. The crystal (?) bowls, while somewhat more melodic than actual pots and pans such as your toddler may bang on, are still more in that direction than actual musical instruments in the European sense.

Still, it is half an hour to sit down and shut up, always a good thing in a hectic world. You might think I do nothing else, being unimaginably single for life and having the whole house to myself. But with The Sims 3 out now, it is so very easy to jump into a simpler pocket universe where there is always something going on. Stealing half an hour from sleep (thanks to the 10 minutes of delta at the end, which is as much as you get from 90 minutes of sleep in the morning) is a pretty good deal.

While I don’t find Holosync particularly pleasant, LifeFlow 8 has a certain appeal. It is the third and lowest of the alpha levels, the next being the 7 Hz theta level. Actually LF7 is a bit higher, to resonate with the Schumann Resonance, the natural base resonance of Earth’s ionosphere. I am not sure how useful that is, but some like to have that option. But enough about that. I have only heard a shorter sample of it and it did not resonate with me, at least yet.

LifeFlow 8, on the other hand, did. Even though the musical instruments on it are not particularly pleasant (some kind of trombone perhaps, or some weird form of bagpipe?), I immediately felt at home with it. I had not felt that way with the first two levels. I found them honestly to be a distraction rather than a help for meditation. I felt that I would normally meditate deeper than that when I meditated naturally and spontaneously. But with LF 8, it seemed strangely familiar. It did indeed feel like it resonated with me. Putting on the headphones, I would move into non-thinking mode in a matter of heartbeats, much as when meditating spontaneously.

For the non-meditating reader, thinking may sound like a good thing and non-thinking may sound like something your spouse does too much of. That is not quite what I mean. I believe that humans normally daydream when they don’t think. That is, while they are staring blankly, they are actually reliving memories or seeing images of things they want (or fear, for those of a less lucky mental constitution). I don’t do that, but that’s another chapter. What I talk about here is a state of brain where I don’t talk to myself, don’t visit imaginary worlds, but just am. I exist, I observe my own mind casually, but I don’t interact with it. Thoughts still come up, but I don’t think them. I don’t agree or disagree with them, I don’t extend them or compare them, and I don’t subvocalize them.

Usually when verbally oriented people think (and I believe that is most of us), we subvocalize like crazy. That is to say, we partially form the words we think, with our vocal tract, even if we don’t say them or even whisper them, even with our mouth closed, there are still small movements of the muscles we use when we talk. Sensors made with modern sensitive electronics can pick up these movements and actually play your thoughts out loud, although this can still only be done in a laboratory setting and with equipment placed directly on your body. So the CIA cannot actually monitor your thoughts from a distance, and never will with this technology. It just serves as proof that people are indeed directing their thought with the muscles of their vocal tracts. Once you are aware of this, you can start looking for it in yourself, and learn to shut down the whisper of the muscles. Or it could happen spontaneously, when you enter a state of mind where you have nothing you want to say.

For me, this happened first when I prayed to God. At first, I had prayed the American way, rattling off a wish list to God and hanging up. But I considered that this was pretty rude if God was real, and you would not do it in the first place if not. So after talking to God, I started to wait in case he had something to say to me. Some people report that God does actually speak to them. Perhaps they have a different mental constitution than I. God did not speak to me the way people do. But while waiting for him, I had nothing more to say, not even in my thoughts, since God supposedly reads those too. And so, perhaps for the first time in my life, I fell silent inside.

What happened after that, regarding my prayers, is of no concern to this article. But once I knew that it was possible to be silent inside, I could also practice this even when not in prayer. I don’t do that much, because life is full of fun things to do, one after another, and you could live for a million years and not stop having fun. But sometimes I really want that quiet, even though I am not sleepy. Because it is… not fun, exactly, but good. When you don’t have much food, food is good, and when you don’t have much quiet, quiet is good. I guess it is part of the recipe for being human.

It is this silence inside, ironically, that the soundscape of LifeFLow 8 reminds me of. The actual sound is outside the skull and after a few seconds I barely notice it. The quiet is inside, where I retreat to.

For those who have not meditated even casually for a long time, it may be another frequency (probably a higher one) that resonates best with you. Or you may have to get used to the process from scratch first. In the past I would have tried to tell you how, but there is an excellent introduction on Project Meditation, for free. You can even download free spoken instructions and timers of various lengths. I personally did not use a mantra when I first started scientific meditation, I simply counted very slowly to four. Some count to ten. Some just observe their breath. But mantra is probably the most common. Anyway, you probably know all this if you read this entry, unless you are a concerned relative or friend.

So to reiterate: Holosync is an alternative to meditation, while LifeFlow is a way to trigger and maintain meditation. I recommend Holosync when one is sleepy and LifeFlow when not, personally. I am not going to buy the second and later levels of Holosync though. I can afford the rather steep price, but I don’t for a moment believe in the “carrier frequency” theory, and I certainly don’t want affirmations in my meditation. They are an abomination, as far as I am concerned. Perhaps I will write about why, one day, or perhaps not. This is plenty for today.

No dentist today

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The dentist called and cancelled the appointment which was later in the day because he was getting behind and mine was one that could wait.  (One of the false teeth has come loose some time ago, but still not fallen out.) New appointment Monday 22nd.  I suppose that’s OK since I’m not actually in pain, probably unlike many of the other patients.

Bout of sickness

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Well, I ended up only being at work for an hour longer than usual, a pleasant surprise.  But before I got that far, I had a less pleasant surprise that made me wonder whether I could work at all.

On my way through the city, I started to feel bad.  I was short of breath and got a dry cough. Going up the stairs to my office, my heart was hammering much harder than it usually does for such a modest exertion.  And after I arrived, I kept getting rapidly worse.  I started to shiver and feel queasy and out of it, not exactly dizzy but kind of foggy. My heart was beating as if I were running, even though I just stood there.  It was as if all major parts of my body were starting to malfunction at the same time.  I must admit I thought that was what happened, that I had somehow fallen victim to sepsis, “blood poisoning”, an infection spreading throughout the body.  But how?  The loose tooth does harbor a disgusting mix of bacteria, but they have no obvious entryway into the bloodstream, and I have no infected sores that I can see.  I was confused.  But as I kept rapidly getting worse, I thought about going to the emergency room.  (You know what happens if I do that, or even go to a doctor – somehow when it is finally my turn, I am healthier than the doctor and nurses.  I really should get myself a job at a hospital, since I seem to absorb the healing aura of the place in some mystical way!)

Before I came that far, however, I had some sudden and uncomfortable bowel movements to take care of. After this, I felt very tired and spent 10-30 minutes in something between meditation and sleep in my chair, doing nothing but letting the nanomachines repair my body. Which evidently they did.  After some earlier episode, I carry an electronic fever thermometer with me, and according to it my temperature peaked at 37.5 C before that rest, and fell back afterwards.  That is about one degree C higher than my usual morning temperature, but well within normal human range.  Most children and many young women are naturally that warm.

I still don’t feel perfectly well, so no mowing today.  (Besides, the sun was already setting and that means the mosquitos are out.)  As midnight approaches, I have trace of headache, but my heartbeat is back to normal.  It was a bit of a scare, though. I still don’t know what caused it, which is the worst part of it.  Will it be back tomorrow?  Or in the middle of the night?  I have no idea.

One other thing bears mention today.  As I went to the bus stop, there stood a car parked there, a small pickup.  There was no one in it or nearby.  This is unusual, but I just observed it.  The bus had to stop out in the street, but I got on alright.  Two bus stops later, we picked up a couple more people.  This time there stood a lorry (truck) in the bus stop.  I did not see if anyone was in it, but it is not that unnatural.  We drove on, and I spent the time thinking about other things, if at all.  But as we were approaching the city, we stopped again, to let someone off I think.  I noticed that there stood a large car parked in the bus stop.  Then I looked out the window to the other side, and there stood a small passenger car parked on the shoulder of the road, not even at a stop.  It was completely empty and there was no one around.

I decided to check the Internet for clues as to whether the Rapture had occured during the night or morning.  It certainly looked as if a number of drivers had just had a few seconds notice to park their cars…

But whatever it was, I really doubt the Rapture will be a local phenomenon to the Kristiansand area, although some of the small churches here might be less surprised if it were.  The south coast is Norway’s “Bible belt”, although the religion is dying out even here eventually.

(I don’t know for sure whether the Rapture will be a literal, physical event, but I don’t see why not.  It will probably seem very natural though. I mean, the Jews returning to their lands flying like doves was a literal, physical event that must have sounded utterly magical and unrealistic for most of the time it was written in the Bible, likewise the prophecy that they would make the desert bloom. All of this came to pass and hardly anyone lifted an eyebrow.)

But if there is a literal, physical “alien abduction” of Christians at some future point, I think it is pretty sure that I won’t be among those disappearing.  I no longer have that kind of simple, childish faith. Whether that realization was part of what made me feel sick to the bone, I don’t know. “One event following after another does not always mean that the first event was the cause of the second.”

Overslept

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Today came off to a less than perfect start, as I had forgotten to turn my alarm clock radio on after the weekend. I really should continue to get up at the same time during the weekend, as I have been doing for a while.  As it was, I had to just shave and run for the bus. No breakfast, and no meditation.  But at least I was pretty well rested, which came in handy during the hectic workday.

Tomorrow is slated to be even more hectic. Crazy, actually.  This should be interesting.  Of course, I am lucky in that I don’t have anyone at home waiting for me, right?  As long as I catch the last bus, I should be fine. There may not be a journal entry though.  But you have seen that before.

Sims 3, wife simulator

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di090607 “And then she had to open her big mouth.”

“Wife simulator” is a pun, of course. (If there really are wife simulators out there, I would rather not know.) It refers to the phrase “life simulator” that is fondly used about The Sims series. Some may wonder why you would want a life simulator when you already have a life. The game, they conclude, must be for those who don’t have a life. But this requires the (all too common) fallacy that there is only one life possible, namely the one you have. I know better, since my life is very different from yours.

One of the many things my life does not include is an actual wife. (There is occasionally some doubt about this, because of role playing, but believe me, I would have known. And in any case, just suspend your stunned disbelief for the sake of the exposition.) The funny thing is that virtually all my grown-up Sims in the Sims 2 were married. There were a few who had a permanent fear of marriage, but they were otherwise quite content to live in a monogamous relationship. Most of these couples also had a child or more. Actually, most of them wanted to have children. And that makes a lot of sense, because their lifespan is limited, and it is kind of sad to end up with a house with only an urn in it. In a way, it feels like their life is wasted – or nearly so – if they don’t have a new generation to benefit from it.

In real life, of course, there are more meanings to life than simply accumulating cool stuff for future generations and teach them various useful skills. And since The Sims 3 is generally more realistic than its predecessors, perhaps it will have more singles? Yes, probably. As I mentioned in my initial review, it is now possible to create a Sim with the personality traits Loner and Unflirty. Between them, these two traits pretty much makes sure the Sim does not get romantically involved, barring intervention from their creator. (And why would their creator do that after taking the trouble to make them that way?)

After playing for a while with my loner, I made someone who was almost the opposite. While still Good, she was Family-oriented, Friendly, Charismatic and Lucky. And with a little prodding, she actually got a good number of friends and lots of acquaintances. But romance is another matter. It takes a lot more dedication than in The Sims 2, where the Sims would more or less fall into it by themselves. Here it seems to take an extreme dedication. In fact, and this is horribly realistic, it seems to be easier for them to have babies than find love.

Not one to give up halfway, I set out today making a couple instead of a single Sim. They are pretty much the perfect couple, with an ideal mix of shared and complementary traits. Both of them are Good, Friendly Geniuses, but she is a Frugal Bookworm while he is a Lucky Computer Whiz. While there is some more stress involved for me in juggling two Sims, they have a blast. Since both of them can use the Friendly “brighten day” interaction, as well as giving compliments, they can quickly cheer each other up after a hard workday. (Sims take compliments quite seriously, and are happy for three hours after one, if they accept it all of course. Being so compatible, these two always do.) It is, as I have long suspected, wonderful to live with your best friend.

Now, about the romance… Between their jobs where they try to advance, and her lifetime goal as a novelist, there just isn’t much time for romancing. And evidently it takes time now. Despite the occasional kiss, there just aren’t any more advanced romantic interactions available. Even though they both roll the wish for “woohoo” (sex) and a baby, the path from here to there is just so long. I hear this is the case for some real people too. I blame the women and their weird notion that flowers and candles are in any way related to the birds and the bees. OK, I can see bees liking flowers, but that’s it. Birds most assuredly don’t like candles. (Moths do, I guess, but let’s not go there with this safe, family-friendly romance.) Please, my dear Sim couple, you’ve been married since before I started playing you!

(Returns from game) Well, it was doable, and it only took the evening. The key is to start with something reasonable, and keep an eye on the list of available interactions. After kissing massage shows up (which turns out to be the old backrub from Sims 1 and 2, but now it has become a more intimate thing than kissing. What do I know?) After massage, make out becomes available. And eventually, after climbing the ladder of interactions, “woohoo” and “try for baby” show up. The happy couple are now able to find a suitable location on their own, and do not have to be sent off to a bed first. Yay! We try for baby, and thanks to their relatively young age, or the kids radio they have listened to, or sheer good luck, pregnancy ensues! Thank goodness, now we won’t have to go through this again for quite some time…

Sims 3: Work and happiness

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Think happy thoughts. Riiight.

Like the rest of us, the Sims have to work to put food on the table. (Of course, if they have the Moocher personality trait, they can eat the foods off other Sims’ tables instead, but what kind of life is that?) So let’s have a look at work and career in the Sims 3.

You can still look in the newspaper for a job, but now you can also simply go to a fitting workplace and ask for a job. The workplaces are now in the neighborhood, and like the rest of the neighborhood you can go there without a load screen. Most likely you would get a taxi, but you could simply run there if you want. In practice, just click on the map and let the Sim decide how to get there. If they have an opening and you are qualified, you can start the next day. Getting an entry-level job is still ridiculously easy compared to real life. But from then on, there are a few changes from the previous incarnation of the game.

In the Sims 2, there were strict criteria for advancement. This is now much fuzzier. For instance, my gender-bent self-Sim obviously wanted a science job, so she got the one at the agricultural research center. When I looked at have a job panel, there was a small smiling face representing her mood and a small neutral face representing her gardening skill. This was because she went to work in a good mood but without any gardening skill. Since the research center specializes in agriculture, their workers are expected to have some experience with soil and plants. If you advance without upgrading the skill, that little face turns increasingly angry and your career climbing eventually grinds to a halt.

I went to the bookstore and bought a cheap introductory book about gardening. Reading this, my Sim gained a level in this skill. (That particular feature is still there, the skill improvement is not seamless. Perhaps in Sims 4? Or perhaps the wish to level up is so fundamental that people prefer it that way. Certainly online games with levels are hugely popular.) Now my job panel had a smiling face for this as well, and my advancement bar filled up faster, moving toward the first promotion. (Around this time I found out that I could simply plant apples, cabbages and other stuff I had bought at the grocery store, and grow my own garden. This way, I can improve my job skill AND grow free food at the same time. It takes some time, but not a lot more than reading the books to gain the same skill.)

After a couple promotions, there showed up an icon for handiness, or mechanical skill. This is also something you can gain either from books or from practice. At first you may get it inadvertently from fixing a broken shower or unclogging the toilet, but soon you can start tinkering on various items in the house. (I strongly recommend starting with the non-electrical ones, even in the game. In the Sim world, electrical equipment is always on – there are no power cords, so I assume Tesla was successful in their timeline in broadcasting electricity. A fascinating story in itself, but not for today.) Tinkering has the benefit that you may invent ways to actually improve the equipment: My Sim now has an unbreakable shower and a self-cleaning toilet! And of course, the skills you gain will come in handy at work.

If you are highly competent, you can come to work in a terrible mood, work half-heartedly and still get promoted eventually. That’s probably not a good idea, though. There are separate reasons why you should keep your Sims in a good mood and fulfill their wishes within reason. We’ll get into that soon, I promise!

But first let me mention another new feature. While you cannot actually follow your Sims into the building and control their work in detail, you can give them general instructions on how to perform their work. If they work hard, the mood will get progressively worse throughout the workday, so you should be careful about this unless they are in a very good mood already. If you spend time at work doing more comfortable things, your mood will stay high but your advancement bar will fill more slowly. You can also spend time socializing with your coworkers, working on an individual project or assisting your boss.

Each of these will have their own effects. For instance, since my self-Sim is a loner, nerding it with the other scientist will lower her mood without improving her work performance. Working on her own will keep her social phobia at bay, but the project may or may not be successful. A charismatic Sim will benefit more from group work. If in doubt, just go with the ordinary setting, keep your skills sharp and go to work happy, and satisfaction is guaranteed. (Unless you are eaten by a carnivorous plant…)

*
Now let us look at mood and happiness. In The Sims 3, you get “moodlets” that last for a certain time. For instance, sleeping till you are fully rested gives a 10 hour moodlet, enough to last you through the workday if you time it right. On the other hand, you may want to get up earlier to make a good meal, which will give you an 8-hour positive moodlet. The moodlets add up, but there are negative moodlets that have the opposite effect. If you get stinky, for instance, it will drag your mood down, not to mention if you go hungry. While the Sims now have a 24 hour grace period before they starve, they will likely be in a terrible mood. (On the bright side, they are able to eat at work, so you can skip breakfast if you don’t need the bonus moodlet.) Fulfilling wishes gives a 6-hour moodlet, so it may be a good idea to try to squeeze in one of those as well in the morning, preferably one that does not take too much time. Like buying something, if they wish for that. Or perhaps better, giving something to charity. It gave my Sim a nice mood boost for 24 hours (although that may work for good Sims and not for evil Sims.)

So having several happy moodlets is good for your work performance, but that is not all. Oh no. If you have enough of them (and no bad ones), you will see your mood bar move into a new level. (It is easy to see since the mood bar is shaped into two sections.) When your Sim is this happy, she will accrue lifetime happiness points. These can always be achieved by fulfilling wants, but if your Sim is super happy, she will add a few points every hour, even in her sleep! And since a pretty environment and good music will give temporary moodlets while they are there, you may want to do your studying in a beautiful park or while listening to music (or preferably both).

These points can eventually be used to upgrade your Sim. Examples of upgrades are a “steel bladder”, for all you guys who complain that the Sims games are about toilet management. (Actually that part is already toned down in Sims 3, but you can eliminate it completely if you really want to.) Or how about learning all skills faster? Or having the boss look the other way when you laze around at work instead of actually working? Throwing better parties, or telling better jokes? The range of upgrades is quite impressive, and I think it is a safe bet there will be more of them in future expansion packs.

To me, the happiness of my Sims is a main goal of playing the game in the first place. (Thus the “good” self-Sim, right?) But for those who reserve their empathy (if any) for the real world, there is this whole game within a game to encourage treating your Sim well. It took me a bit of time to figure out what was going on, but that’s how this game is. The learning curve is not at all steep, but it is fairly long. Even though it works right out of the box, there are surprises in the details. After all, not only the Sims should be happy, but the player too!